The Anti-Purge Act Of 1914
by Red Witch
Summary: Cheryl shares even more of her family history.


** Someone with an axe took off with the disclaimer that I don't own any Archer characters or movie ideas. I saw a trailer for a movie I wasn't going to see and then it hit me, this probably happened among certain other imaginary psychotic families. One in particular. **

**The Anti-Purge Act Of 1914**

"Another day, another dollar down the drain with no clients," Cyril groaned as the gang hung around the bullpen of the Figgis Agency. "We need to do something productive today."

"How about we go to a movie?" Ray asked.

"Clearly we have very different ideas of what the word productive means," Cyril sighed. "On the other hand, since we have nothing better to do. Why not?"

"How about we see Bride Hunt?" Pam asked. "That sounds like a hoot."

"Yeah just what everyone wants to see," Lana drawled. "Rich white people hunting each other. Blasting each other to pieces. Actually, now that I've said it aloud, I **do** want to see that."

"Ugh! That movie is so unrealistic," Cheryl groaned. "Everybody knows nowadays you can't do **that!** Well not without a legal disclaimer."

"_Seriously?"_ Ray asked.

"It's true," Cheryl said. "My family on my mother's side used to do that way back in the day. For only about a decade or so in the 1800's. Then one of the surviving brides decided to sue her husband and the family for breach of contract. She took them to rich people's court and won!"

Everyone looked at her. Cheryl shrugged. "She came from a family of very successful lawyers."

"Oh," Everyone said.

Cheryl nodded. "Her family pointed out that the hunting ritual was **not **mentioned in the pre-nup! Nor was it described anywhere in the document as what was expected of her as a wife."

"No wonder the judge sided with her," Cyril remarked.

"That and the fact the bride was his niece, yeah…" Cheryl nodded. "Boy did she clean up! Almost made up for that lost eye and those two missing fingers."

"I'm surprised Tunts never hunted their new brides for sport," Lana remarked.

"Considering what we know about your family," Pam said. "And how much they love to shoot things and cause violence."

"Well not **newlyweds! **Duh!" Cheryl said. "They only did that back in the day after a couple no longer wanted to be together every fifteen years. Say what you will, but it was a lot cheaper and less messy than a divorce."

"So Tunts used to kill their wives by hunting them?" Lana asked. "I ask, not really surprised by this fact."

"Actually, nine times out of ten it was the **wives **that survived," Cheryl explained. "And more than half the time the idiot husbands accidentally killed themselves. They either shot themselves or accidentally brought down a chandelier over their heads…"

"I can actually see that happening," Ray remarked.

"One of my idiot great uncles thought it would be a **great idea** if he sicced his dogs on his wife," Cheryl added. "Unfortunately, he forgot the simple fact that it was his **wife** that always fed the dogs."

"I see where this is going," Krieger winced. "Actually, I **have** seen that with my own father."

"Uncle Bertram Tunt thought it would be more sporting if he and his wife of thirty years simply had a duel," Cheryl went on.

"Let me guess," Lana remarked. "She was the better shot, wasn't she?"

"Well she still had her eyesight," Cheryl said. "Unlike Uncle Bertram so yeah…"

"Feeling less and less sorry for the wives here," Ray remarked.

"Another one of my cousins thought it would be easy to hunt his wife while on safari in Africa," Cheryl added. "However, she figured it out and threw in a lot of raw meat in his tent while he slept that night. You know, lions can be really quiet when they want to be."

"That one I knew," Krieger admitted. "One of my father's lab assistants found that out the hard way."

Cheryl added. "One cousin tried to kill his wife with a metal scythe. In a thunderstorm. ZZZAAAAAPPP!"

"Your family has the most bizarre accidents," Pam remarked.

"And she lived on a farm," Ray pointed.

"Exactly!" Pam nodded. "I lived in a town where the number one cause of death after alcoholism was tractors!"

Cheryl went on. "Another uncle tried to chop off his wife's head. But she dodged and tripped him at the last minute and he fell out the window. A third-floor window. A third-floor window overlooking a very high cliff. I mean even if he didn't accidentally chop off his own head on the way down, the fall would have killed him. And if the fall didn't kill him the sharks that ate his body definitely would have."

"What about the wives that were killed?" Lana asked. "What about them?"

"There were only three that were killed," Cheryl said. "Two of them were in a coma and the other one lost her legs due to some kind of train accident."

"That doesn't sound very sporting," Pam said.

"Well they did give her a wheelchair and a crossbow with a flaming arrow," Cheryl said. "Technically that one was a tie."

"Your family history sounds more and more like a horror movie every time I hear some of it," Ray shuddered.

"That's pretty much what the Baskettunt Family Reunion of 1912 was like," Cheryl admitted. "AKA the Baskettunt Family Massacre."

"Oh, dear sweet lord," Ray blanched.

"See my great-great grand uncle Benedict Baskettunt thought it would be a great idea if he made his many heirs fight to the death to see who would be worthy of his family fortune," Cheryl explained. "The problem was that he didn't foresee that most of them formed an alliance to kill him first."

"That actually makes sense logically," Pam remarked. "I mean nobody was going to get the fortune until the old man died anyway. If they all killed each other before the sadistic old coot dropped dead, nobody would get anything. And the old dude would be laughing over their corpses."

"That's what **they thought**," Cheryl nodded. "They didn't start killing each other until they all chopped up my great uncle's body into human sushi. And then some of them wanted to eat him like sushi but the rest thought this was taking it too far…"

"You are making this up!" Lana was stunned.

"I **wish,**" Cheryl said. "Thirty-nine Baskettunts, their spouses and children entered the great Baskettunt estate. Along with fifty-three various pets. By the following morning, only three Baskettunts and nine dogs survived. And a surprisingly resilient hamster."

"I take it that's the reason that there are no more Baskettunts to this day?" Cyril asked.

Cheryl nodded. "Of the three Baskettunts that survived, one died of her injures two days later. Her husband was arrested for arson, murder and attempted murder. He died in jail by suicide…"

"Arson?" Pam asked.

"They covered the whole thing up by burning Baskettunt Manor to the ground," Cheryl explained. "I think it's a Motel 6 now. And the third ran off with her servant lover with a lot of family jewels and bonds to South America. Never to be seen again."

Cheryl went on. "After that debacle, the majority of the Baskettunt fortune went to the regular Tunts. Then they called a meeting with all the other mega-rich families in both North America and Europe and they all agreed that this sort of thing should probably stop unless they wanted to hunt their own families into extinction."

"Smart move," Lana said.

"Yeah especially when more than half of the rich families in the world back then had either married Tunts or were related to Tunts in some way," Cheryl nodded. "They all secretly signed the Anti-Purge Act of 1914 which clearly stated that rich families couldn't hold purges within their families or hunt spouses. Not without a very clear article in a pre-nup and a separate paper signed by both the new bride or groom saying that they read the article and agreed to it along with their family members and their lawyers. And their bankers. And their investors. And an extra lawyer just in case. And it had to be notarized. Twice."

"Basically, these hunts stopped due to red tape?" Lana asked.

"As usual," Cheryl sighed. "Legal disclaimers take all the fun out of things."

"Wait hang on," Pam realized. "You said this act was signed in 1914, right? But the Baskettunt Massacre was in **1912**…"

"Well this was back in the old days when it took forever to get anywhere and to get a large group of people to meet up!" Cheryl told her. "They didn't have Delta Airlines back then! Duh!"

"I'm guessing some other stuff happened during that time period didn't it?" Cyril asked.

"There were a few other violent incidents yes," Cheryl nodded. "Apparently some of the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts had a few beefs within their families."

"Wait," Lana realized. "Didn't your crazy cousin try to kill you?"

"Yes, but individual grudges within the family don't count," Cheryl told her. "We just can't do it en masse anymore. And since technically hunting your spouse is a charge of domestic abuse…"

"Nowadays it's cheaper and easier to divorce your spouse," Cyril added.

"Or wait until one of them dies," Cheryl nodded. "Ironically enough, this was also around the time most rich people decided that hunting regular people for sport was kind of passé. And not as much fun as killing family members."

"I can see that," Pam remarked.

"You're imagining hunting and killing your sister, aren't you?" Ray asked.

"And you're not doing that with some of **your relatives**?" Pam asked.

Ray shrugged. "Point taken."

Cheryl added. "Ironically, the Baskettunt Family Massacre had other repercussions as well. The extra fortune the Tunts got from the demise of that side of the family was invested in real estate and inside mattresses. When the Stock Market Crash of 1929 happened, the Tunts were relatively unscathed even though they lost a lot of money."

"It pays to diversify," Cyril admitted.

"And of course, with the Baskettunts gone," Cheryl went on. "Other families were able to take over the businesses they cornered the market on. The Kennedys really cleaned up in the bootlegging business with the Baskettunts out of the way."

"The Tunt version of trickle-down economics," Ray remarked.

"The treaty also opened up the way for new business deals and alliances with other families," Cheryl said. "With the assurance that family members wouldn't murder their new brides, marriages between the different families provided more stability."

"Among the upper classes," Lana said.

"Yes," Cheryl nodded. "Well until they started stealing from each other. But that's a whole other story. As well as how it gave the world Oreos."

"I have to ask," Lana said. "How did it do **that?**"

"Yeah weren't Oreos invented in **1912?**" Pam asked. "By Nabisco?"

"Actually, the Baskettunts invented Oreos way before then," Cheryl nodded.

"The Baskettunts?" Ray asked. "Invented **Oreos?"**

"Exactly," Cheryl nodded. "In fact, a favorite cookie made by the matriarch of the family was called Zebra Cookie. You know? With the white and the black?"

"Wouldn't that technically be Fudge Stripes?" Ray asked.

Cheryl went on. "But nobody but the Baskettunts were allowed to eat them. However, the Baskettunts cook knew the recipe by heart and sold the recipe after she got fired for some reason. I know it wasn't stealing. Or having an affair. Doesn't matter. She went to work for the National Biscuit Company and they decided to call it Oreo for some reason. I guess they wanted to make it sound fancy."

"So how did the treaty give the world Oreos?" Cyril asked.

"Uh the Baskettunts threatened a lawsuit! Duh!" Cheryl said. "When they all died the lawsuit got kicked out of court. And everybody realized how good Oreos were. The rest is history."

"I think some of my brain cells are history," Cyril groaned. "Listening to that story."

"Anybody want an Oreo?" Pam asked. Everyone looked at her. "What?"


End file.
